the international bank for reconstruction and development, now part of the world bank group. .. >> for more information, by the way, on that episode visit i c-span.org/firstladies. right now on booktv, patricia brady chronicles the life of the very first first lady from the beginning of her relationship with george washington through the revolutioning their war in her biography, "martha washington: an american life." ms. brady describes her as a decisive woman who contributed

greatly to the character of america. this is just under an hour. >> thank you, jim, and thanks to everybody at mount vernon for all the help they have given me to make this possible, and to bob and clarice smith for endowing this terrific lecture series and giving historians a place to come and try to convince you all to read our books. [laughter] um, for the past 25 years or so i've written about nell si cuts dis-- nelly cuts us the. she was fun and easy to write about. a beautiful, smart, intelligence, feisty young woman. and, of course, i've known about her grandmother for the same period of time, but i never quite got the enthusiasm to think about writing about martha washington. i knew what she was like, nelly's grandmama. she was 60, 70 years old. she was frumpy and dumpy, and she was small and timid and

perhaps not the smartest person around. i took in all the myths everyone took in. and i just couldn't think that it really was worth my while. but in year 2000 i was at the bicentennial at the white house, and people were up on stage talking about dolly madison, talking about abigail adams, talking about the many presidents. and i thought, now, why can't there be something about martha washington? and then there was one of those moments where you suddenly say how dumb am i? she wasn't born 60 years old. [laughter] she wasn't a little baby with the mop cap and the gray hair. she was young. she was beautiful. she was vulnerable. she did suffer pain and disappointment and excitement and romance. and i had just talkin' it for -- taken it for granted the way everybody did. we just pictured her as the elderly lady, and then we sent

that picture back in time. so as i tried to find out what the real martha washington was like to look at who she was and how she was, i also started to wonder what she really looked like as a young woman. and that's the reason for the cards tonight. i don't like to use slides. don't like to turn out the lights. i like to keep my eyes on the audience out here and see that we're all together on it. but i think the process that we use to find this portrait is interesting because it is part of my feeling of revival about martha washington. and i'll start off admitting it right away, i stole the whole idea from jim reese and mount vernon that they have a very large, very state of the art, exciting project going on to show george washington very accurately at different times in

his life. um, i decided to look for more of the bargain basement approach to this, and they very kindly gave me permission to use the image of one of their miniatures made when martha washington was 45 years old. she's very -- it's a very pretty miniature, and we know that it's very accurate because it resembles very much all of the other later portraits. and so it seemed like a good baseline. there is a younger portrait that was done, and it was a terrible portrait, frankly, and looks nothing like any of the others. so i just chose to ignore that one. i went to the lsu forensics lab where the head of the faces lab known as the bone lady usually deals with corpses and with skeletons and with abducted children and puts faces on people and does age progressions. and i asked if they could possibly do an age regression

and take martha washington back 20 years in time from the miniature and show us what that lady would have looked like when she was 25. and what you see on the back of the cards. they went pack and did -- they went back and made all the changes, reversed the aging that we all go through, plumped her lips and widened her eyes and undrooped her eyelids. and then the question will be probably what about the weight? i know that always comes up, and people say, oh, she was always a rotund little lady. but that's looking backward. that wasn't true at all. how do i know that? well, very simply first marriage daniel kept an account book of everything they ordered from london, and that included all of their finery, all of their fine ware. and in it he gives sizes.

now, they're not like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, not those sorts of number sizes, but it's corruptive sizes -- descriptive sizes. gloves to hit the hands of a very tiny woman. it's a quilted petticoat to fit a very small waist. it's a bodice with sleeves for a woman who's very slim. and after you go through seven years of those orders, you have a very clear picture of the size woman she was. and so that was part of the information that we fed into the age regression. then we took the regression and the publisher by then had gotten so excited that they decided that they would actually pay a modern-day historical artist to reconstruct a portrait that could have been painted at that time, that should have been painted by that time if there was any justice in the world -- [laughter] but we wanted to bring back the beautiful martha. the lovable martha. the martha that everyone who

ever encountered her with only a couple of exceptions really admired. and so michael dees who is well known for doing the time covers of ben franklin and thomas jefferson, who's done the stamps of james dean and marilyn monroe, took on this job, and he produced this portrait. it's one version of what she could have looked like. and it took a little bit of talking to convince him that the nose had to be, yes, really act by lin, that that's what the style was. it's important to remember that styles in beauty change just as styles in clothing do. and once i had that picture, i felt as if i had kind of a lode star that i could look at the martha washington, a really wonderful woman that i would have liked to have known. someone who was really smart, active, brave, someone who would take chances to get what she wanted, someone who was not the timid housewife who had always

been portrayed to us. one of the, one of the first clues to her true character, i think, is in that very same invoice book that i mentioned to you all earlier. that book came down through the lee family, through the descendants of martha washington and robert e. lee. and at some point it was buried. it said during the civil war it got sopping wet, and you can imagine that old, faded brown ink done in a not very good handwriting then getting sopping wet and drying out. it was horrible to try to read it. but it was worth it. it was worth it to get a sense of their lifestyle. and i was reading along at the virginia historical society getting to 1757 when martha's husband daniel suddenly died, and i turned a page and went, be still my heart. that's martha's handwriting.

suddenly, he had died, and she had taken over the ordering for this immense system of plantations, 18,000 acres, over 300 slaves. one of the wealthiest estates in the state of virginia. and here's this young girl who at 17, um, fell in love with an older man whose father-in-law didn't care to have her join their family, someone who had just sort of learned on the fly, and suddenly her husband dies, and she takes over. she shows what she's made of. and what we see in that order is that her order for the plantation is business-like, demanding, forthright, sensible. she orders a fishing -- [inaudible] she describes what kind of hooks and bobbers she wants. she orders axes, she orders hose, she orders all the sort of regular farm implements.

and then she goes on and orders a tombstone for her husband because, of course, there was no marble available here, and the tombstone had to come from england. and she sends along the inscription that it is to be carved on dan l yell's tombstone -- daniel's tombstone. but even more heart-touching than that, she also includes a lock of his hair to go in a mourning ring. and she includes a lock of the hair of her eldest daughter, her sweet little daughter, fanny, who died two weeks before her fourth birthday who had just begun to learn to read and write and who was just running around the plantation with her beautiful, fashionable red shoes, and she had suddenly dropped dead. and so in one letter she has the tombstone, and she has two mourning rings for her husband and for her eldest daughter. so this is a woman who can bear grief. this is a woman who knows she has to keep going to look after

her two children. this is a woman who when she's not satisfied with the kind of accounts her local attorney is keeping has the team hitched up, rides into town to confront him and to have him explain to her just why it is that those accounts don't match and that his bills aren't what she's expecting. and how do we know that? because he wrote her a letter indignant, oh, he was furious. he said really if you had wanted to question me, you could have sent for me, and i would have come out and explained the whole thing. and then he takes pages upon pages upon pages to explain why it is that there was nothing to be concerned about at all. but clearly she had really stirred up the ant's nest there and made him realize that he would be observed, that he would not be able to just take over. and she, of course, as the widow without a will, without trustees was the woman who was in charge of this immense property.

well, skip ahead eight months when she meets george washington. the question always comes up why did they marry, were they in love, were both of them equally in love, all those sorts of questions. and, of course, i think most of this audience, the kind of audience who really likes history and spends a lot of time at mount vernon, knows that martha washington destroyed her and george washington's correspondence. you know, from her and from him going back and forth. that's 41 years' worth of invaluable correspondence. it includes the time when they were courting, when he was over the mountains fighting in the french and indian war. it includes the time early in the revolution when they were apart. whenever they were apart as long as the mails were running, they wrote to each other weekly. and if they didn't get a letter, they would get very upset, and they'd start to try to discover

where those letters were because they always wanted to be in touch. they were such partners. they were so -- they communed on such a soul level that they really, really needed to know what they were doing. well, why did she do that? why burn up all those papers which all of us would kill to go pack in time and say, stop -- go back in time and say, stop! don't let that fire, please, let me carry it away with me. people get some very weared and crazy here here -- theories for. i've heard, for example, she didn't want people to know she was a bad writer. well, if there's one thing she was not, it was humble. she had a very good opinion of herself, a well-deserved good opinion. she was not full of herself, but she certainly was not all humble is and shy. it's questioned, others have said, well, their marriage was so terrible that they didn't want to reveal it by having

letters show just how many problems they had. well, that's really foolishness too. the answer is so clear and so simple, she believed in privacy like all 18th and 19th century ladies. you know, in the old days a lady's name was supposed to appear in the paper only three times, you know, born, married and died, and that was it. you weren't supposed to be there otherwise. they had certainly suffered enough from the impertinent curiosity of people who wanted to know about them. and she knew, of course, how much interest there was in her husband and in their lives. and she didn't care to share that. i mean, she had shared her husband much more than she ever expected to when they married. she wanted, she really liked nothing better than to be at home at mount vernon with george washington and then as they they would refer to it just home alone with the family, you know, a mere extra 15 or 20 relatives

and a house full of servants. but for those times that was pretty much alone. they did not want to be with a lot of strangers, and she surely did not want strangers to read her correspondence, so she destroyed it. so then it meant, naturally, that to get at her character we had to look at all sorts of other things and to piece it together. it's one reason it took so long to figure out who she was and how she was. um, when they started courting, um, i always said to myself there must have been other suitors. because she was simply too great a catch. she was one of the wealthiest widows in the colony. she had complete control of the estate. she had no trustees, no older brothers, no father, no father-in-law, no one to meddle in and interfere with the new husband's rights. and then she was beautiful. and then she had a fabulous

personality. and everyone really liked her. she was all movement and quickness, she was tiny, he was short, five feet nothing in her stocking feet, a little woman with beautiful white teeth which she kept well into old age. and, of course, good teeth were an exceptional thing in those days rather than the norm. so much so that people would comment on her teeth and say she has the most beautiful smile i ever saw, and her teeth are so white. [laughter] you know, it was just astounding. so she was a great looking woman. she loved housekeeping. what she really loved was making her husband happy. she made her first husband very, very happy. and she knew how to create a feeling of warmth, a feeling of contentment, a feeling of togetherness. so lots of people would have liked to have married her. but i didn't actually have a piece of paper that said that, and that was with, you know,

suitor a said that and suitor b said that. but in one of those very lucky chances that seems to happen to historians at least all the time, i think, a friend at the virginia state library, sara barth, sent me an e-mail and said, oh, by the way, you are aware of those letters of charles carter's courtship of martha, respect you? i said, well, no, but please do give me those citations. one of them is from a friend saying charles carter is very gay since he has attacked the widow custus. the other is from charles carter himself to his brother landon. the carters were at the top of the colonial heap. they were just as gentrified as you could be. and besides that, they were very rich. so this was a sue or to have really worth having -- suitor really worth having. and he had been widowed, lost

his wife about six months before. and he wrote to his brother saying i wasn't sure i could find anyone again, and now i've found the lovely mrs. c., you know, she is so -- she is, her nature is so sweet, she is so beautiful, he says, i hope to find the happiness in her arms that i found in the arms of my much beloved partner. and he said further, i hope to rouse a flame in her breast. he was in love, there's no doubt about it. he was in love. but, of course, he did have competition. he did have this gangly, lanky, 6-2, 6-3 military man who was one of the finest horsemen, one of the finest athletes in the entire colony, someone who had a wonderful, quiet charm with the ladies. the ladies always liked george washington. and washington had appeared on the scene. this is one of those times when

i really wanted the facts to be other than what they are. but as historians, we have a responsibility. if you have to say what the records show. i did not want george washington to have been infatuated with sally fairfax. i just felt like i didn't need her in that picture. and i certainly -- [laughter] i certainly didn't need the miniseries that had vac key smith playing her -- jackie smith playing her. i thought that was much too unfair. [laughter] but the documents show he was infatwithouted. she was the beautiful -- infatuated. she was the beautiful next door neighbor, the wife of his friend. the flirtatious type of woman who enjoys holding other men on a string. his letters show that he was still infatuated with sally fairfax when he first met martha. and probably she gathered it pretty soon, you know? it's -- they say that love and a

cold are two things you can't hide. i feel she probably guessed that -- not that there was something going on so much as that he had feelings in that direction. but nonetheless, he realized that that was no future for him, that he needed a hostess at mount vernon, that he needed to settle down and get married. so when he went calling on the young widow custus, it was kind of a reconnaissance trip to see what he thought. not only was she rich, of course, she was beautiful and charming, um, and very interested in him. because she asked him to come back the very next week. and i don't think that would have happened if she hadn't made up her mind more or less on the spot. you know, she had the two men, or she could have waited. i mean, goodness knows she could have had many other suitors, or for that matter, she could have never remarried and just run things herself. but she obviously decided right away. and the courtship went very fast.

and i believe, i argue just from inference not from actually having letters that say so, but i believe that she never doubted her ability to win his heart. that she saw nothing but the chance for happiness with them, that she would never have put herself in the position of marrying someone who was going to stay forever in love with another woman. and that certainly didn't happen. very shortly after their marriage you can see the happiness, the contentment that starts in his letters and in her letters that she writes to her sisters and her nieces and others. when we see the depth of, the depth of the mutual need they have for each other, the depth of the companionship that they enjoy together is with the american revolution. because up until that time in

the first years, the first 15 or 16 years of their marriage, they were virtually never apart, only on very short trips when he went out to the frontier or surveying, looking over new property or things of that sort. but in terms of being apart, they seldom are. and then, of course, along comes the revolution. when george washington went up to philadelphia to the continental congress, it was expected that he would come home again. you know, that this was not meant to be an absence of many years' time as it turned out to be. and when he was asked to assume the command of the continental army, he waited a couple of days before he wrote home to her because he knew i this was not going to be the -- he knew this was not going to be the kind of news that martha was really looking for. but you can see his priorities in the first two weeks after he's asked to command the armies. that there are seven extent letters that we -- there may have been others, of course, but

there's seven that we know of. only two of those deal with military matters. only two in the first two weeks of taking on this huge responsibility to take over a sort of slipshod standing army, basically, of militia units and to turn it into an actual army. and yet that's not the first thing he does. the first thing he does is write home, write to martha a long letter in which he spends a lot of time begging her not to be angry with him and assuring her that this is -- he did not want to do this. he had the responsibility. he had to do it. but that this wasn't what he wanted. as he said, i should enjoy more real happiness and felicity in one month with you at home than i have the most distant prospect of reaping abroad if my stay was

to be seven times seven years. seven times seven years. he, he loved being with her. but the nation called, and he knew he was the man for that job, and he had to do it. and she knew it too. she did not repine. but in those same two weeks, he wrote to her again. he went out and did some shopping for her, bought her some muslin to make a dress that she had wanted. he also wrote three letters to various family members saying i feel very uneasy about mrs. washington. please go and visit her. please have her come to your house. please do not leave her alone. i cannot leave her alone. she must have company. and then a couple of letters that had to do with the military. and then he went on and took over the revolution. but the first thing he had to do was to make sure that his wife was okay. and also the amount of trust he had in her good sense is shown in the way he sends her a copy

of his will and says, well, i hope this suits you. if you don't like the way my will is, write back and let me know, and i'll make it different. and he also says stay at mount vernon if you want to, or stay with my brother, or stay with your sister in williamsburg, or in short, do whatever you want to. whatever will make you happy, do that. now, compare that to the kind of patriarch that we often see who tries to micromanage every tiny detail of their wives' and children's lives. but george washington knew better than that. he knew that she was there, her judgment was sound, she would do what was the best thing. so he left it for her. um, of course, the war did not turn out the way he expected to. he fully expected to be home that fall. he wasn't home that fall, as we very well know. and when he realized he couldn't come home, then what was the

first thing he had to do? he had to have his wife come north, come up to cambridge and join him in winter camp. you know, winter camps are the encampments that the armies, both sides of the armies go into during the winter because the logistics were just too hard to try to keep armies out fighting during the winter season. they couldn't keep them supplied, they couldn't keep them clothed, fed, howed. and so at -- housed. and so at some point as they maneuvered around a little bit one would go into camp, and then the other. and they would just stay there until spring and the fighting season started up again. and every single year of the war he sent for martha to come and be with him. during the eight-and-a-half years of the war, she was with him for five, more than half the time she was with him. and that was because she provided his emotional sanctuary. george washington, he's pretty

near perfect but not completely perfect. [laughter] i mean, he was. i stand next to none in my admiration for george washington. but he often felt very derespond kent and -- despondent and downcast. he could go into gloomy depressions. he had a violent temper which he sometimes had trouble keeping under control. he could get very nitpicky. all of those things could happen. and the way that he kept himselfs soothed and calm and able to -- himself suited and calm and really able to bear living in those conditions for eight-and-a-half years was to have martha with him. to have her with him. she was, in my belief, she was the secret weapon of the american revolution. she was the way that he could stay in the field. his staying in the field meant the other officers stayed in the field, the other officers staying in the field meant the

armyy stayed in the field. if he had gone home over every year, chances were there wouldn't have been much of an army when he came back in the spring. just holding that army together was one of his greatest achievements as a commander, keeping a body of men ready to fight every spring. and she was part of it. as we might say, she was on his side, and she was at his side. she was always with him. she always provided the confidence -- her adoration, really, was part of the air that he breathed, and it helped make it possible for him to deal with the thousands of disappointments and discouragements and setbacks and defeats that happened to him during the revolution. the presidency was a little different matter. this was something she did not quite see the same need for. the revolution she understood. of course he had to take command. he was the one -- he was the only one who could really do it,

and i do believe he was the only one who could have done it. and she gave hum up for that period of time -- him up for that period of time with a good heart. you know, she really did not nag and hector. but the presidency, now, that's politics. she didn't quite see the need for politics. why couldn't somebody else be president? why couldn't somebody else go off and spend years away from home? she fought hard against it. as she said, she thought it was time for them to spend time in quiet tranquility and retirement at their own home, that it wasn't the time for them to go off to new york city, it wasn't the time for them to go off to philadelphia. but again, he was talked into it in terms of his duty. everyone said you are the only one who can make this new nation into a nation that will survive, and he believed that, and so he took it on. um, she came to believe that,

but she still found it very hard -- found it very hard to forgive all of his political enemies who took advantage of his sense of duty to play all sorts of political games and tricks with him. ..

it shows her on a platform receiving. but of course, she didn't do that. that is the 19th century re-imagination. actually, they received a plane, drawing room and she sat on the couch and often on the couch sat with her was abigail adams. abigail considered that her place to sit next to mrs. washington. they met people as they came in. they shook hands, but there was never the sense of a platform or thrown to raise them above. that was never the way that she looked at herself as the president's first lady. it was never the way that he looked at himself. they both had a good sense of their own dignity, certainly. but they never had the sense of

being somehow starstruck individuals separate from the common herd. one of the things that i really like to do in getting into her mind was to read the books that she read. to go over the books them by the washington red. again, how do we know? well, malvern and has a wonderful collection of books that has her inscription. they have others in which family members have written that they love this book because my grandmother read and loves this book as well. so it is quite a collection to look at and to read and say what was the sort of thing that she likes to read. and first and foremost was the bible or her prayer book. she was a very religious episcopalian anglican.

she spent every morning playing and reading bible verses. she was a communicant of the church and went to church quite regularly. there was one it came down to the family, and they weighed 9 pounds each. they are very clean. they don't show signs of a lot of fingerprints. and they don't show signs of crumpled pages and whatnot. not as if they person read it everyday for four years. i suspect that those are attractive display copies that you would put in the drawing room. what she really read was the episcopal prayer book. because those she ordered frequently frequently and body

wants. that is what's used for her devotion. she liked to read books by religious leaders, which were very interesting. they were so far from the i am so much better than you are type above. it would be let's look at the bigger picture, certain things that we all have in common, and certainly, she was a very tolerant person. some of the books she liked or gothic -- they were gothic romance. those were books that had pretty racy storylines. we know that she read them because her granddaughter said she did. and she liked them. and in fact, i do believe that the plantation was named for one of the states in the book.

we see it in her life as well. the kind of loyalty and non-judgmental mess. nathaniel greene was one of george washington's favorites. he was the general that he could count on to be loyal, to do what he said, to move fast when he needed to move fast. to hold still when he needed to hold still. washington was very fond of his wife, who is a very young and flighty and foolish quarrel. she loved to dance. she loves to flirt. she loved to have parties and she liked to drink a lot of wine. she liked the french officers and she landed just so she could work with them. a lot of people were very judgmental. but not george and martha washington. they saw her as their friend and their friend's wife. and they always supported her even in later years when her reputation was much more clouded. but she was always welcome at the presidential mansion.

and i think that says a lot about the kind of people that we are talking about. there are so many aspects that we could talk about. so many things that are important about martha washington. one of the ways that male writers have frequently criticized here is, first of all, being a timid person, then it's been over fond mother. when you actually don't read the secondary sources when you look at the dates and a calendar is, the letters and what is happening. you realize that she was in her middle age, after having four children, she only had one child left. her son, jackie. jackie was a big disappointment to george washington. but washington was always trying to remake jackie into his own --

not his own image, as so much what he would have liked to have been. but he was always trying to get jackie to go to school and study hard and to read greek. and there was no way that this boy was ever going to do any of those things. it just wasn't it just wasn't happening. i think that is where she was actually the realistic one. when she looked for was how, within the bounds of the fortunate he would inherit and the plantation he would be in charge of, how could he make the best and most reasonable life? and so she helped him to marry young. because she believed that it was the best thing for him. it certainly turned out to be. i think of all the anchors that helped hold her to a productive life. his marriage and his four children, it was some of the best things that ever happened to him. that was his mother stealing.

george was still writing his letter saying i don't see why he can't go to college and learn some greek. but when he went to college he did not learn that anyway, so was really a waste of time. the other thing that i like to more or less address is all question of timidity. always shown as a timid and scary woman, and it's mostly based on one letter that she wrote when jackie was a little boy. and she writes and says oh, i can just barely sleep. they let jackie at home with a housekeeper and a cousin and a house full of servants, so wasn't that he was by himself. they decided to see how he would do. not going with his mother and george washington. so she said, i cannot do this again, it was just too hard on me. every time the dogs barked, i thought it might be a messenger coming to tell me that he had something terrible happened to him. but she didn't say that i am

afraid of dogs were terrified in the ninth were very timid person. it has been extrapolated. think about what it meant every year. first of all, there was a british army around, and the british army has the greatest navy in the world, which meant that the british navy pop up anyplace and there was always the danger. this country was not undivided, there were huge numbers of tories who might have captured mrs. washington and france inter, traded her and used her somehow to their benefit. the roads themselves or to new jersey or pennsylvania, it was

horrible. accidents could certainly be fatal. it was not a great means of transportation. they would have an awful trip. the ferry would run wild and they would have to get it across from and then she would write a letter home and say oh, we had a very pleasant trip. everything went ever over so well, it's just so beautiful out here. it was the ability to take dangerous and uncomfortable situations and to make light of them and make nothing of them. i think even more startling than not is the question of smallpox. it was the major epidemic of colonial america. it is frequently fatal, but when it wasn't, and horribly scarred people for life. she had never had. george washington had a very mild case in barbados as a teenager.

so he was immune to the disease. when they started with the army together and they brought together all of those young men from the east and massachusetts and new jersey, all up into the little towns of 20 and 30 and 100 people, it was a time of smallpox epidemics. of course, more of the boys died at valley forge from smallpox when donated from enemy action, of course. and once the smallpox had broken up in boston and new york, george said says that you must go home. you cannot stay here because it is too dangerous. of course, she said that it was a very dangerous procedure.

people did get smallpox because it was not the pox like it is today. he wrote to his brother and said, well, mrs. washington says that she will be vaccinated, but i doubt her resolution. and you think, what rethinking of? [laughter] you know that woman would do anything to be with you. so they went through the smallpox vaccination, no dancing around, no being afraid. there was just the only thing to do if i could be with my husband during this war. right now, today, this afternoon without hesitation. i just touched a few on the aspects and there is much more to be known and admire about her. but i think getting to the real

martha washington helps us to know about one of those marital partnerships that changed the course of american history. thank you. i'm not. [applause] >> the question way at the back. >> what was the relationship between the george washington's wife and his mother? >> a lot of people ask me about the relationship between martha washington and her mother amal. i think it was one of those typical relationships.

[laughter] >> i do not think that they like each other very much. they certainly never invited mary washington to come and stay for a long period of time as they did martha's mother. george wanted her mother to come up there. as far as i know, she never stayed here after they were married. they always visited her on their way south when they went to williamsburg. certainly there was always pleasantness and politeness. but i think that they were just too different in character. and i do not think they had that much in common. i do not think that george washington really wanted his wife and mother to spend that much time together. this is based on inference by how many times and of a stock, how many days they stayed, and they often did not stay with her at their house. they stayed with her sister instead.

i would guess it was not warm and cozy, but i'm sure it was very respectful. >> among the research, was there any one thing that surprised you more than anything else? >> i think her role in the american revolution surprised me the most. i knew that she had gone up there often and i knew that she had made a home for him and all the young officers who were part of his headquarters staff. she had a lot of the young man to take care of and she made it possible for the lives of the other officer. her role was not only very important, but was seen by newspapers at the time is very important. they talked about this, which

they knitted socks for entry infantrymen. she did that thing everyday. but at the newspapers, as they would say, she helped the heroes repair and rest for another day. that was probably her secret weapon. >> [inaudible question] >> yes, i don't think that they ever kept anything from each other. certainly he has shown to her everything. they did not keep secrets. i also doubt seriously that she

argued with him about it. now, this was not her own belief. she did not come to the belief that slaves should be freed. she had only one slave of her own, the other ones were slaves that she could not free even if she wanted to. but that was just too important of a thing for them not to talk about. one thing they always did was respect each other and respect what they wanted to do. if you think about jackie for a moment, when she made a decision that jackie should not go back to college and should get married. he expected that that was her son, but it was property, and that her opinion needed to override his. in the same way that she would accept that his opinion needed to override hers about the slaves. of course, we have no written documentation about that because they were not a part. they were together for that entire time.

but they certainly know that they always talk every evening. the writings have survived that they spend the evening talking and chatting and read the newspaper and read letters. they talk about what was going on. i can't believe for a moment that it was was a surprise to her or that she argued. but that she was not convinced in her heart. >> two questions. how old was she when she was first without, and would you say a word about the distribution of her four grandchildren and the few that survived in the other two? >> okay. martha washington was 17 years old. daniel custis was 20 years old. it took them a while to get

married because his father didn't think that her father was fine enough or rich enough. but they stood together and whatever she said to him, which we don't know what it was, helped to turn his mind around, saying that this woman would be good for my son. so they married when she was 18 years old. that she was 25 when her husband died. so she was a very young widow. that is the age that i was going for. the age of the beautiful young widows. eight months after her husband's death, plenty of people got married a month or two after, six months was considered various respectable because

people in those days it married early and often. they weren't supposed to live by themselves. as you know, they had four children, two of them died when they were little. one was a year and a half and the other was just and the other was just short of four years old. a son and daughter grew up in the daughter grow up to be a teenager indicted epilepsy here at mount vernon. then she had the one remaining son out of all of her children. it was a huge family state that would be passed down. so he married nellie kappler calvert of maryland. that is how he met her was at school. they had four children as well.

they had four daughters, allies, martha, nelly, and the boy. he came down with a form of typhus, one of the frequent diseases. a lot of people got it and survived it, but jackie did not. he was buried in the garden. nelly calvert was a beautiful black-eyed bernat. obviously she would get married again pretty fast. they looked at the situation, the revolutionary war was coming to an end. martha did not like in household without children, and they felt it would be better for the boys to have the stepgrandfather look after him. so they put up the kids. the two eldest daughter stayed

with their mother, and very shortly the stepfather because she married pretty shortly afterwards. the two younger children lived as the informally adopted children of the washington family. they were part of the first first family. what they did when they were in new york city, she had to look around to find schools to put the kids in. they had very much younger children living with them. they delighted in him them all their lives. it was wonderful. andrew jackson, for example, rear of the sun. andrew jackson junior was one of a set of twins. they day one of the twins to the jackson's two race.

it was an odd back then, but it would be today. they all stayed in close touch. >> [inaudible question] >> i would love to tell you that, but unfortunately they did not let me choose. [laughter] the publisher chose the objects in the picture. they were basically looking for 18th century iconic objects. at one point he had mount vernon in the background, which i thought was a very keen idea. except it was the present-day mount vernon which did not exist at that time. i sent back a picture of what mount vernon look like, they sent it back and said it was not

grand enough. [laughter] >> are there any other questions? is not, thank you so much. i have loved talking with you. [applause] back. >> at age 25, she was one of the wealthiest in the colonies. the british threatened to take her hostage and later she would become the nation's first lady. meet martha washington and he stands first ladies series.?s we will visit some places that influenced her life including colonial williamsburg, valley forge, mount vernon, and philadelphia. live monday night on c-span,

c-span radio, and c-span.org. >> are you interested in being a part of booktv's online book club? every month we will feature a different book and author. you are invited to join. post a comment on facebook.com or send us a tweet on booktv. >> at the end of the working day, the prime minister would say very loudly, that was the signal that the working day was over. secretary and the general played

goose. he loved games, churchill that. he said this goose was a friend of mine, you carve it. [laughter] >> he made fun of vegetarians, which he called not eaters. he said well, gentlemen, if you have finished, we will get on with important matters. all of the nut eaters died early after a long period of senile decay. another churchill favorite food was irish stew with plenty of onions, surprisingly sometimes pineapple. this is the meal that he served with eisenhower. and of course, caviar.

churchill loved caviar. he was thrilled when stalin sent him some caviar, when henry hawkins brought him a gift of it back from the soviet union. when traveling, he had his meals served on his timing, not based on the clock. he loved picnics, even in wartime, whatever the place where the weather. there is a lovely photo in my book showing him in a three-piece suit sitting on the rock by the side of the road having a picnic. he picnicked with roosevelt at hyde park, he picnicked on the banks of the rhine river. and also on the north african desert with friends. he established his own picnicked rituals, enthusiastically seeing old army post and calling for verses that could only be recited at picnics. much has been said and written

about him with alcohol. some of it is true, most of it is not, some of it is exaggerated. i go into detail about his drinking habits. he had been told that he was a drunk. a charge that one or two of his critics repeated. he did consume more alcohol than we are used to today, but not a great deal by the standards of his contemporaries. the drink did not affect him or his work. >> you can watch this and other programs at booktv.org. here is a list of the best-selling nonfiction e-book and print titles according to "the new york times." this reflects sales as of february 21. at the top of the list is chris kyle's american sniper. the navy s.e.a.l. recalls being america's most lethal sniper. you can watch the program at

booktv.org. the second is evan alexander accounting his near-death experience in his book, proof of heaven. and sony sotomayor and her autobiography, my beloved world. you can watch your discussion online at booktv.org. and number four is the story of leaving the church of scientology in beyond belief. number five is lawrence wright looking into the world of church of scientology. in his book, going clear. bill o'reilly and martin do guard a peer pure back to back on the list for their book, killing lincoln. the books are sixth and seventh respectively. number eight is susan king studying the lives of introverts in her book, quiet. followed by